


Just Breathe

by Eilinelithil



Series: Lover's Leap [6]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Hyperion Heights (Once Upon a Time)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26012971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: Belle and Rumplestiltskin find themselves in an interesting and unsettling situation as they jump forward into the future.  Detective Weaver is dying... and the surgeons assigned to him lack the skills to save him.
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Series: Lover's Leap [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863370
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Just Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 6th AU-gust fic. The prompt was Hospital

Pain.

It was all he felt. As if someone had burned a hole through his body and soul. He tried to focus, to remember, to _understand_ what was going on, but thought eluded him. He was all sensation now.

Sensation and fear.

This wasn’t right. Rumplestiltskin felt the other consciousness, but it was his own - without knowledge of who he was, even where he was or when.

When.

That was the key.

_Tilly held up the cup right in front of his face._

_“Look at it,” she said, “Don’t you remember?” She was frowning, her gaze intense as he slowly stepped closer. “You gave it to me. You said it would help you get back to_ her _. Remind you of how to get back to_ her _.”_

_“This…” he pointed at the blue and white porcelain, his finger barely an inch away. “…is just a cup.”_

_Tilly backed up, letting her hand fall, her despondent gaze on the cup. “You said it would work.” Then she looked up again as she clearly had a thought. “I… I remember now. We knew each other before.” Her words picked up speed as she spoke, excited, desperate, “Before in that other place. Yes that’s it!”_

_He made a face, sighing as he reached for his cuffs._

_“Only you’d… you had a different name then. What was it? Sheepshanks… spindleshanks…”_

_With a grimace and a sigh, he came to her, telling her, “You’ve gone mad.”_

_“We’re_ all _mad here!” she cried throwing up her hands before pushing at him, grabbing at his gun… his gun in her hand, pointing at him._

_“Tilly,” he drew out her name. “Put the gun down.” Then he raised his voice, “Now!”_

_“No. Sorry,” she said. Her mouth in a flat line. “I’ve got no choice.” With wide, staring eyes she looked to the cup and despairing said, “The teacup didn’t work.”_

_“Why’re you doing this?” he tried to keep his voice reasonable._

_Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “Because you told me to… Rumplestiltskin.”_

_Then the world became nothing but heat and light, and pain…_

This was _his_ future, and it terrified him. He was dying, and if he died now, he would never…

* * *

The feel of the bed beneath her changed from softness and comfort to the hardness of a cot, and she opened her eyes into the dimly lit broom closet of a room. She wondered for a moment what had woken her, followed closely by who she was this time, and yet again by a question that haunted Belle.

Twice now they had jumped, and twice they had not brought a wrong to right. What was going on?

The sound that had woken her came again, an incessant beeping sound from a small device that stood on a nightstand next to the head of the cotlike bed on which she was resting. A moment later, a voice - calm, collected and commanding - came over the public address system.

_Paging Doctor Aivi, report to OR-3 Stat. Code Blue._

The announcement repeated, and Belle felt herself responding as if on automatic. Quickly, but not hurried, efficient. She caught the embroidered name in the mirror as she moved toward the door. Aivi. _She_ was the doctor.

She took a breath as she opened the door to the room and made her way through the hospital corridors to the nearest elevator, and up to the floor that housed the operating rooms. As soon as she reached OR-3 she scrubbed in, and turned her back to push open the doors as she moved in toward the patient on the table.

“What have we got?” she asked. Her tone was business like and confident, and the junior doctors began to peel away to make space for her. It was the anesthesiologist that answered.

“Fifty two year old male, police detective. Single gunshot wound to the chest.”

As if his words reminded the other surgeons of their duties, they all began reporting their findings to her. Belle-that-was-the-doctor listened, and nodded, but then said, “Well, what’s the problem?”

“We can’t find enough tissue to patch the guy up,” one of her juniors told her sheepishly.

She shook her head. “There’s _always_ enough tissue if you know where to find it,” she said and stepped forward. “Let’s get as much O neg in here as the bank can let us have… I’ve a feeling he’s going to need it.”

Stepping closer still, her blood froze as she caught sight of the patient’s face.

“Rumble,” she breathed.

“Doctor Aivi?” someone questioned, pulling her back to the moment; making her push away everything she felt, for everything her host _knew_.

She _had_ to save him.

* * *

There was a great, gray fog all around him, drifting around his ankles, to his knees. Everything else was dark. Everything else was nothing. He _remembered_ nothing… and then a name… Spinner? No, not spinner, something else… something similar. Another kind of craft… he used to spin… spinning helped.

_Helps me to forget/Forget what?/Guess it must have worked_

A trill of a laugh.

He heard hushed voices, words he was certain he wasn’t supposed to hear.

“I don’t know how she did it.” “Good surgeon, I guess?” “There’s good surgeon, and fucking miracle worker, and I’m telling you—” “Oh, come on. You know as well as I do, there’s no such thing as a miracle in these kind of places.” “No man, I’m telling you. This one was a gonner. Aiva waltzed in and… poof. Like magic. I’ve never seen anyone so focused. It’s like her hands _knew_.” “There you are then, she—”

A new voice. Sharper, but familiar.

“If the two of you have nothing better to do, I can _find_ you something, instead of talking trash around my patient.”

“Sorry, Doctor, just…”

“What?”

“How?” There was wonder, admiration in the voice. “How did you do it?”

“Haven’t you heard?” there was a certain unfamiliar tone in the too, too, painfully familiar voice. Sarcasm perhaps, or… “Any curse can—”

_…be broken/ Who told you that!? Who knows that!/I-I-I don't know. She, uh... she—she—_

“Belle…” he breathed, still confused, still caught in the whirl of time and fate… tattered strands, like frayed yarn whipping like vines in the wind.

“Ha ha, very funny, Doctor Aivi,”

“Well if you spent half as much time studying your craft as you do in gossip and speculation, perhaps surgeries like this wouldn’t be beyond you.” There was the pause of a beat before she added, “Leave. _now_.”

“Belle,” Rumple breathed again, fighting focus… fighting a bright mist.

* * *

She glared at her residents until the both of them left. She hadn’t missed the whisper of her name from the still sedated Rumplestiltskin, and this didn’t feel right. She had to find a way to end it. To bring them both back; back to the Dark Castle before they lost themselves entirely.

She crossed the room, drawing the curtain to shield the door and leaned down over the too still, ailing form of the Dark One.

“I know that you can hear me,” she said softly, reaching to brush her fingers through the sides of his hair. “Follow the sound of my voice,” she urged tenderly.

He made and alarming rasping sound in his throat.

“No, no no…” she whispered, softer yet, and leaned down to press the softness of her mouth to his in a tender kiss, pulling away to form words against his mouth. “Just breathe…”

* * *

Rumplestiltskin was the first to stir, awareness of himself returning slowly, as the memory of what it felt like to suffer pins and needles in a sleeping limb. Her hands were still in his, as he last remembered, but her head rested against his shoulder, as though she had somehow fallen forward onto him.

He moved a foot, and the toe of his boot caught a hard object, sending Belle’s book skittering across the polished marble of the Dark Castle’s floor.

He swallowed hard, straining his neck to look down on the beauty of her face, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed. His belly clenched hard, and he bit down harder yet on the feelings that were beginning to surface. It would never do.

It _couldn’t_ be, and yet… just for a moment he allowed himself to believe and felt the almost painful lurching in his stomach and the suddenly irregular beat of his heart. What the _hell_ had they put to rights with the last three jumps filled with lust and acceptance.

His mind hesitated, afraid to use the word hovering in the shadows.

Love.

“Just breathe,” he told himself, echoing the last words he remembered hearing her utter, trying to let them settle his needful, aching heart.


End file.
